
Author 



Title 



Imprint 



16—47372-3 GPO 



SPEECH 



OF THE 



HON. E. DELAFIELD SMITH 



FOR 



GRANT AND THE REPUBLICAN CAUSE, 



DELIVEKED AT 



COOPER INSTITUTE, NE^^;^ YORK, 
Friday Evening, October 30, 1868. 



SPEECH 



OF THE 



HON. E. DELAFIELD SMITH 



FOR 



GRANT AND THE REPUBLICAN CAUSE, 



DELIVERED AT 



COOPER INSTITUTE, NE^^^ YORK. 



Friday Evening, October SO, 1868. 



New York: 
THE SUN JOB PEINT, FEINTING HOUSE SQUAEE. 

1868. 



A 



E6>70 



6150» 



SPEECH 



OP THE 



HON. E. DELAFIELD SMITH. 



Citizens of Neav York : — People have little respect for "pen- 
sioners on the dead." When ostentation stmts abroad witliout 
brains or estate, we do not bow our heads because he boasts a 
rich or intellectual progenitor. The democratic party lives upon 
a name which it belies, and flourishes upon an ancestry which it 
dishonors. Its grandsire was Thomas Jkffekson, wlio with 
one hand hurled defiance at European despotisms, while the 
other led forward the humblest of his countrymen to the rights 
of manhood. Its father was Andrew Jackson, whose right 
hand held at bay the British lion at In ew Orleans, while his left 
hand crushed the head of the rattlesnake in South Carolina. 
Where is the humanity of Jefferson ? Where the courage of 
Jackson '^ The party which vaunts these hereditary names is 
to-day too degenerate to stand for equal rights, as it was yester- 
day too demoralized to interpose the weight of its organization 
against an obstinate &iul dangerous rebellion. 

If you arraign it for its disloyal attitude, it answers, with 
insane irrelevancy, " Constitution ! ■' *' Constitution ! " But, you 
respond, the old democracy were for liberty against oj^pression ; 
for equal and exact justice against privilege and caste ; for the 
country against both foreign foes and domestic traitors. Hark 
to their answer, " Constitution ! '' " Constitution ! " 

Like Dogberry's culprit, who borrowed money in the name of 
God till no man would lend for " God's sake," they have talked 
and traded upon the Constitution till some honest men have 
grown weary of the very word. 



They forget that the constitution did not make the nation. 
The nation made the constitution. Aye, and by the blood of 
her sons it has been defended, purilied, perpetuated, in spite of 
treason at the South and treachery in the North. Who assailed 
the constitution ? The democratic party at the South. By whom 
was the assault repulsed ? The republican party of the North. 
"Ah," says the strict constructionist, in substance and effect : — 
" It is constitutional to destroy the constitution, if by seces- 
sion you only make the destruction complete. But it is uncon- 
stitutional to defend the constitution, if in so doing you exalt 
the sovereignty of the nation above the sovereignty of the 
states." What was our answer to this disloyal sophistry? 
We will sustain municipal privileges when they are not abused, 
and " state rights" when they are not wrongs ; but down with 
your petty sovereignties ! Heed .the warnings of South America 
and Mexico. Emulate the recent examples of Italy and Ger- 
many. Up with the flag of the union. On with the standard 
of the nation. Our country ! Rule supreme to the centers of 
your lakes and gulfs ; to the farthest borders of your seas and 
oceans ! 

The watchword of the constitution does not belong to the 
democratic party, even in the light of more recent events. As 
their devotion to law has been illuminated by burning asylums, 
and their love of order illustrated by yelling mobs, so their 
fidelity to the constitution is celebrated by the sacrifice of 
southern loyalists, whose immunities are written in the text of 
the constitution, but obliterated in the red pages of democratic 
connnentaries ! 

Read, my countrymen, read in the bloody deeds with which 
southern soil is stained, the logical results of democratic theories. 

The constitution belongs to its friends ; not to its enemies. 
It is the right of every American citizen to read it without note 
or comment. It is brief, plain, explicit. When it was framed, 
the advocates of a weak confederation vv'ere beaten. After 
it was adopted, they set about to compass their ends by 
befogged constructions. The democratic party worship the 
commentary ; we the text. Through the mist of exposition the 
old charter shines like a beacon light. Let them grope in the 
vapor ; we are guided by the light itself. 



They charge the representatives of the people in Congress 
assembled with nsurpation. They exalt the power of the Presi- 
dent. They magnify the prerogatives of the Supreme Court. 
This may be labeled democratic ; but it is not constitutional. 

Turn to the page itself. You will tind that the Court may 
determine cases and controversies between parties to whom its 
jurisdiction extends ; there its authority terminates. The old 
" Council of Revision " of Xesv York could annul laws, although 
passed by the legislature and approved by the executive. 
This power is assumed for the Supreme Court. But the claim 
has no warranty in the constitution. 

Examine farther. The duties of the President are exliausted 
in ten lines. He is to take care that the laws are faithfully ex- 
ecuted. That is the end of him, except his qualified influence 
over legislation, his restricted night to negotiate treaties, his 
limited authority as a military commander-in-chief, and his de- 
fined power to pardon. Hence, when our illustrious chieftain, 
General Gkant, declared that he should "have no policy of his 
own to enforce against the will of the people," he proved him- 
self a better constitutional lawyer than Andrew Johnson or 
Horatio Seymour. 

Examine still farther. The powers of Congress afe spread 
over unnumbered paragraphs. What says the instrument itself? 
The Congress shall have power — to lay taxes ; provide for the 
common defence and general welfare ; borrow money ; regulate 
commerce with foreign nations and among the states ; control 
bankruptcies ; coin money ; fix the standard of weights and pleas- 
ures ; establish post-roads ; promote the progress of science and 
useful arts ; constitute courts of justice ; define and punish pira- 
cies ; declare war ; raise and support ai*mies ; provide and main- 
tain a navy ; make rules for the government and regulation of 
the land and naval forces ; sup])ress insurrections ; pro^'ide for 
organizing, arming, and disciplining the militia ; make all laws 
necessary and proper for carrying into execution the powers 
vested by the constitution in the government of the United 
States, or any department or oflicer thereof; to say nothing of 
the power of impeachment, which may be exercised against both 
the executive and the judiciary. 

This, fellow citizens, is the constitution " as it is," 



In the last section of the first article, the states (while secured 
in certain municipal privileges) are expressly deprived of every 
attribute of sovereignty. So nnich was taught our fathers by 
the experience of the confederation. But those great men, 
remembering the tyranny of British kings, were equally jealous 
of autocratic power. 

They made their chief magistrate a President, not an Emperor 
nor a Czar ; their highest tribunal of justice a Court, not an 
Oligarchy, not a Spanish Junta, not a Yenetian Council of Ten. 
Neither executive nor judicial decrees, but the Constitution and 
the statutes of Congress are made the " supreme law of the 
land." 

Our fathers established a republican empire ; the people are 
its sovereign, and beneath the dome of the capitol sit their 
representatives. 

Thus, fellow-citizens, the actual text of our national charter 
furnishes no support to democratic pretensions as to the power 
of the President or of the Supreme Court over the rebel com- 
munities. In the first stages of their conquered condition, they 
were properly subjected to military orders ; in the next, to 
presidential proclamations; but the final and rightful jurisdic- 
tion over them is exercised by the American people through the 
American Congress. 

It follows, " as the night the day," that the laws of reconstruc- 
tion are not " revolutionary " nor " void." They are founded on 
the very rock of the Constitution. From that Gibraltar let states- 
men defend ~them. 

The military features of the system of reconstruction find a 
remarkable precedent in the course pursued by our government 
toward the conquered territory of New Mexico. Proceedings 
which had been widely questioned passed in review before our 
supreme tribunal. They were declared consistent with constitu- 
tional authority, and of legal force. 

If my democratic friends, who are fond of referring to the 
constitution and the courts, will examine the opinions of those 
great jurists, Gkier and Nelson, in the prize cases, they will 
discover that their Southern friends were both enemies and 
traitors ; that we had the right to subjugate them as communi- 
ties and hang them as individuals; that the United States 



could vindicate its offended sovereignty at the cost of the guilty 
citizen,']]and at ^the same time execute toward the South all the 
powers which might be exercised in the case of a foreign war. 
To say that these rights terminated the moment the last gun 
was fired and the last surrender accomplished, is to declare that 
after all our dreadful sacrifice of blood and treasure, we should 
be left with no indemnity for the past, no security ±br the future. 

Such generosit}^, such magnanimity, as the nation exhibited 
to the arrogant South, the world had never witnessed. With 
my whole mind 1 approve it. With my whole heart I rejoice 
in it. But while the American peo]3le forgive ; they will never 
submit to the domination of secession conspirators. 

They may forget that the bold Beauregard assailed the nation 
with the red brand of war ; but they remember always, that 
even now, the stealthy Stephens and the wily Yalandigham 
conspire against it with democratic intrigue, and this was their 
original plan rather than the manlier audacity of Davis. 

It is our right to garner i^ i^eace V\^hat we reaped in war. Be 
not baffled by the ballot, whv 3 the bullet failed. 

Americans ! You cannot trust the democratic party. It has 
too many champions among the conspirators of the South ; too 
many followers among their sympathisers in the North; too 
many leaders who conferred with British ministers upon the 
interests of their country in time of war. 

Oh, I remember well, when the late conflict began to rage, 
and we sought by blockade to stop supplies to southern camps ; 
democratic lawyers decried the power of the President who pro- 
claimed it, because, said they, there can be no blockade until 
there is war, and no matter how much fighting is going on, 
there can be no war till Congress declares it. Yet, the very 
men who then embarrassed their government by that astute posi- 
tion, now, when you seek the fruits of your victories by congres- 
sional action, denounce the authority of Congress which they 
then magnified, and exalt the power of the executive which they 
then derided. 

So in the dominion of finance. They were for bullion against 
credit, when loans were necessary to feed your armies ; but they 
start the cry of paper against coin, just in time to check a favor- 
able funding of the public debt. 



8 

It is remarkable that their principles, which they declare to \>e 
immutable and eternal, are always in snch antagonism with the 
interests of their oonntry, and in such accord with the views of 
its enemies! 

Merchants and men of business ! The Eepublican party has 
saved the nation from the incendiaries of the South. TTitli your 
help, it will rescue the state from the destructives of the city. 
Do you want the ring that circles your City Hall coiled around 
your State Capitol ( If you do not, arm the little " Monitor " 
that watched at Hampton RhcKies. Commission its builder as 
its captain. Anchor it near the wharves at Albany, and let it 
fire on every piratical craft that comes sailing up the river ! 

Citizens of the Empire State, arise, arouse I Xot othebs, but 
orESELVES I Remember the last lines of that poet of England, 
who laid his heart and life upon the altar of Grecian independ- 
ence at Missolonghi : 

" Awaie ! Xot Greece, she i« awake ; 
Awake, irr sfieit ! " 

So may we exclaim : — Awake ! Xot Ohio, not Indiana, not 
Xebraska, not Pennsylvania, not West Yirginia; they are 
awake. Awake, Xew York I Lead the long column of Eepub- 
lican States. Onward, for Gka>-t. for Colfax, for Gkiswold, and 
for TicTOET ! 

"Let us have peace!" Peace to the ashes of our honored 
dead. Peace to the pensioned widow and orphan. Peace to 
the hunted loyalist. Peace to the South. Peace to commerce. 
Peace to industry. And the sweet peace of home to Seymour 
and to Blair I 



